Re: [scots-l] Burrolling, as we posh fowk call it
In article [EMAIL PROTECTED], Nigel Gatherer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: "Surprisingly enough it WAS called exactly that when he published it in his Harp and Claymore collection in 1903. The term is almost certainly a dancing reference, although in 18th century Scotland a "Rocking" was the Lowland equivalent of the Highland "ceilidh". The rocking step is one of the canonical steps of the Highland Fling and must have been around in Skinner's time. The tune sounds reasonable for a Highland Fling as far as I'm concerned so that's probably not far off the mark. Anselm -- Anselm Lingnau . [EMAIL PROTECTED] You're much more likely to be knocked down by a snowball than by an equivalent number of snowflakes. -- Larry Wall Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] The Unfortunate Rake
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Does anyone know an early printing of this melody? The melody was printed in O'Neill's Music of Ireland (1903), and Joyce's Ancient Irish Music (1873). Joyce died about 1914, so even in the remote chance that he composed the tune (he didn't), it would still be out of copyright. -- Nigel Gatherer, Crieff, Scotland Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] The Unfortunate Rake
John Erdman wrote: That tune is known in America as "the Streets of Laredo". Someone here claims copyright to those words and the familiar melody (also used for the Bard of Armagh) and that someone will not allow me permission to use it if I sell the book outside of the U.S., which as a book for the CLARSACH I most certainly want to do! (All the other tunes in the book are public domain.) Cynthia - I have my mother's old banjo tutor of Cowboy Songs from around 1930 and it's got the Streets of Laredo in there, definitely with a copyright on it, not bothered to check whose as the book is buried in a music stool somewhere. However you will not be playing it in the same key and no doubt a couple of notes will be fractionally different in duration, and it's based on an earlier traditional tune, so there is little risk unless you CALL your tune anything associated with a copyright version. David Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] The Unfortunate Rake
Cynthia - Here's what I found in my library. I have two books with the tune and words in them. The one with the most info is "Best Loved American Folk Songs" by Alan and John Lomax published in 1947. The other is a Alan Lomax book published in 1960, "Folk Songs of North America" Here's a transcript of the text from the first book describing "The Streets of Laredo". quote After "The Chisholm Trail" the most popular Western ballad is the story of the young cowboy who rode the familiar road from rum to ruin. The hundred-odd examples of this ballad in my collection have located the scene of the cowbow's death in almost as many Western towns. As a matter of fact , the young man died in the British Isles, not of gunshot wounds, but of syphilis. Whereupon all the gay ladies of the town, grateful for his generousity to them, followed his coffin to the cemetery. We have one Irish version sung in Cork about the year 1790 which identifies the young man as a soldier and has him take his last journey with the ruffle of military drums: My jewel, my joy, don't trouble me with the drums, Sound the dead march as my corpse goes along; And over my body throw handfuls of laurel, And let them all know that I'm going to my rest. An early English version discovers the "unfortunate lad down by Lock Hospital, wrapped in flannel, so hard was his fate." Here the balladeer goes into medical details: Had she but told me when she disordered me, Had she but told me of it in time, I might have got salts and pills of white mercury, But now I'm cut down in the height of my Prime. Apparently the grim message of thios ballad suited your moralizing folk-singer so well that a warning to young ladies was soon composed. This variant, current in England, is also known to United States singers and begins, in one form: One morning, one morning, one morning in May, I spied a young lady all clad in white linen, All clad in white linen and as cold as the clay. When I was a young girl, I used to see pleasure, When I was a young girl, I used to drink ale, Right out of the ale-house, and into the jail-house, Out of the barroom and down to my grave. Go send for the preacher to come and pray for me, Go send for the doctor to heal up my wounds, My poor head is aching, my sad heart is breaking, My body's salivated and Hell is my doom. end quote The text then goes on to show how the words ultimately morphed into the words for the St James Infirmary Blues. The Alan Lomax version in the later book (1960), the tune is entitled "The Dying Cowboy" and references the 1910 Lomax collection "Cowboy Songs". The tune is slightly different and in a differnt key than the one in the 1947 book. It also suggests that the tune is known as "One Morning in May" in non-cowboy circles. Cynthia, if you are interested in photocopies of these pages please contact me off-list with your mailing address. It's so obvious that this tune and words are part of the folk tradition, it's quite astounding (and absurd) to me that someone would have the chutzpah to claim these tunes and words. Further the cost to someone to "enforce" such a ridiculous claim against what will undoubtably be a "modest" publication wouldn't be worth it. I'm certainly not an expert in these matters but I believe that the tune in a setting you made specifically for the clairsach would be copyrightable **by you**. Also if you need to include words, to use whatever verson you'd like to but to footnote and reference the source as in a scholarly journal. Hope this is useful, John That tune is known in America as "the Streets of Laredo". Someone here claims copyright to those words and the familiar melody (also used for the Bard of Armagh) and that someone will not allow me permission to use it if I sell the book outside of the U.S., which as a book for the CLARSACH I most certainly want to do! (All the other tunes in the book are public domain.) The ancestor of this song is "The Unfortunate Rake". I have been trying to find a citation for that song, and for the melody. My research indicates that it was published as a broadside in London in 1790, but I can't find any copy of that. Does anyone know an early printing of this melody? Early words, that pre-date the American ones? Any ideas or leads will be VERY welcome. I want to go to press so I can get this project off my desk, and move on to the next one! -- 90 Trefethen Ave Peaks Island, ME 04108 Tel 207-766-5797 Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[scots-l] pesticide poisoning
A'm sorrie tae hear tha Erica, whit were ye daen drinkin pesticides? I've been ill for 15 years, and my doctor says very few people with this sort of problem ever really get over it, but there's a good chance I'll get some sort of life back as long as I stay right away from toxic substances, because my system can't detoxify them as others' can The usual cause of this kind of problem is organophosphates. I did some research into this when my girlfriend (a dietitian/allergy specialist) and the doctor she works for were treating a whole family who'd been clobbered with the stuff. The practicalities of this kind of poisoning aren't generally familiar, so it may be worth giving the important tip and its rationale even though this is way OT. Organophosphate or carbamate poisoning is basically the same as nerve gas poisoning; the chemical locks on to the enzyme acetylcholinesterase, which is what your nervous system uses to eliminate the neurotransmitter acetylcholine after it has been used to send a nerve impulse. If the acetylcholine builds up too much, nerves start firing uncontrollably or shut down. The poisoning goes through three stages. In the first stage, levels of acetylcholine have built up enough to cause acute symptoms; this may only take minutes to start. Symptoms include vomiting, blindness, diarrhoea, muscle spasms, and paralysis; perhaps death from paralysis of the breathing muscles. Treatment here is the sort of thing familiar from the Gulf War: chemicals that counteract acetylcholine (atropine, pyridostigmine). You have to keep pumping the antidote in to keep the symptoms down. You also have to balance the antidotes carefully, as they are all potentially lethal poisons themselves. In some cases an iron lung may be necessary for a short time. This acute phase is over in hours, but the problems aren't. In the next phase, acetylcholine levels have dropped enough that you won't die immediately, but there is still a lot of poison bound to the enzyme. There's a blood test: it measures how much working acetylcholinesterase there is in red cells. There is also a treatment, quite different from the antodotes used in the acute phase. But: *** ONLY *** ONE *** THING *** WORKS *** - pralidoxime. This stuff dislodges the poison from the enzyme, so that it can get back to functioning normally. The next phase is probably where Erica is. If pralidoxime is not given soon enough, binding of the poison to the enzyme becomes *irreversible*. And for reasons I don't understand, the enzyme is not replaced, ever. There's no consensus on how long you've got before this phase is reached: I've seen 24 hours, 2 weeks and a month all quoted in different books. Once this has happened, nerve damage is permanent and the symptoms are chronically disabling: weakness, fatigue, mental disturbance, spasms, pain, partial blindness. This is what happened to Marion's patients: she could only palliate their symptoms and help them fight a compensation case in court (they won). Big doses of nutritional supplements (e.g. intravenous magnesium) may help to some extent. So the bottom line is, if you have *any* reason to believe someone has just been poisoned by organophosphates or carbamates, get in touch with a poisons centre and find how you can get pralidoxime treatment immediately if not sooner; your GP or AE department will need to contact the poisons centre themselves anyway. Pralidoxime is not very toxic so the risks are minimal. (UK poisons centres: http://www.doh.gov.uk/npis.htm). The same phases happen with less spectacular exposures: agricultural workers often get this, with more and more of their acetylcholinesterase being inactivated each time they handle sheep dip carelessly. The early phase of this is called "dipper's flu" and does resemble flu. The later phase can hit quite unexpectedly; if the inactivation is proceeding at a constant rate, the syptoms won't - having enzyme activity reduced from 100% to 90% isn't like having it reduced from 20% to 10%. A weird symptom many farmers report is suicidal impulses coming out of the blue with no prior depressed mood: a typical case was a guy who found himself about to drive his tractor off a cliff when he suddenly realized "what the hell am I doing?". Since farmers typically have free access to guns, paraquat, and lethal machinery, this may explain some of their high suicide rate. There is some evidence that organochlorine pesticides like DDT may increase the risk of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (motor neurone disease), which is even worse. There is no way to eliminate DDT from the body and the only treatment for ALS is a fabulously expensive drug that maybe only buys you a few months. === http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ === Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[scots-l] Correction to Rock re spinning
At 04:48 AM 2/23/01 -0800, you wrote: Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 21:46:42 + From: David Kilpatrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [scots-l] Rocking Step Kate Dunlay or David Greenberg wrote: Talking of Scott Skinner, someone asked me for his tune "Scott Skinner's Rockin' Step"... The term is almost certainly a dancing reference, although in 18th century Scotland a "Rocking" was the Lowland equivalent of the Highland "ceilidh". That's interesting. I had always just assumed that the title referred to the Rocking Step of the Highland Fling. I would think the 'rocking' as a gathering of women comes from spinning - the 'rock' being just what it says, a stone used to weight the wool as it is hand-spin using gravity. Well, no, it isn't. A rock is another word for distaff, the holder for the flax or wool that was being spun. From M-W.com Main Entry: 3rock Function: noun Etymology: Middle English roc, from Middle Dutch rocke; akin to Old High German rocko distaff Date: 14th century 1 : DISTAFF 2 : the wool or flax on a distaff Janice in Duluth, GA a spinster and proud of it Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] The Unfortunate Rake
David writes: | I have my mother's old banjo tutor of Cowboy Songs from around 1930 and it's got the | Streets of Laredo in there, definitely with a copyright on it, not bothered to check |whose | as the book is buried in a music stool somewhere. However you will not be playing it |in | the same key and no doubt a couple of notes will be fractionally different in |duration, | and it's based on an earlier traditional tune, so there is little risk unless you |CALL | your tune anything associated with a copyright version. Indeed. Maybe the best idea is to call it "The Bard of Omagh", and note in the text that it's a variant of the earlier tune "The Unfortunate Rake" and the later American ballad "The Streets of Laredo". This will make it obvious to anyone claiming a copyright that they are making a fraudulent claim on a much earlier tune. Chances are if you present them with the names and dates of the earlier publications, they'll realize that they can't get away with it, and you'll never hear from them again. Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] The Unfortunate Rake
In a message dated 2/23/01 1:21:03 PM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Indeed. Maybe the best idea is to call it "The Bard of Omagh", and note in the text that it's a variant of the earlier tune "The Unfortunate Rake" and the later American ballad "The Streets of Laredo". I certainly could do this, and that's my line of reasoning for using the "Unfortunate Rake". But, I've got the same problem with "The Bard" as I do with "The Rake": finding a copy of it with a pre-1927 date! I have a book here that claims the Bard was written in 1801 by Thomas Campbell, but I need some kind of "proof" of that. Even if it's a facsimile re-print of an old book containing that title, melody, and I'll take whatever lyrics I can find at this point! I had great success at the Library of Congress with some of the tunes I chose to use. I actually held in my hands broadsides from circa 1800 for some of them. For those, no one had better dare to claim I violated copyright! It was interesting to see how the words for some of these tunes have changed over the last two centuries. I used the older lyrics, for very obvious reasons! So, anyway: if I get stuck for the Rake, does anyone know where I can find an old copy of "The Bard of Armagh"? --Cynthia Cathcart Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] Correction to Rock re spinning
Janice Hopper wrote: Well, no, it isn't. A rock is another word for distaff, the holder for the flax or wool that was being spun. From M-W.com Main Entry: 3rock Function: noun Etymology: Middle English roc, from Middle Dutch rocke; akin to Old High German rocko distaff Date: 14th century 1 : DISTAFF 2 : the wool or flax on a distaff If so, then the Tweed Guild of Spinners and Weavers lady named it or demonstrated it incorrectly. Do you mean a holder for the wool being spun, or a holder on to which the wool is spun? When my wife spins, nothing holds the wool being spun apart from the her hands. It ends up on a holder after it has been spun, and the holder is nothing but a sort of spool off which you can push a ball of finished single ply spinning when it's full. What I've been shown literally did depend on using a weight, because I had a go myself, but I can't work out now how the finished yarn would be stored. As far as I work it out you could only do a yard at once go, which seems a bit pointless, but this was demonstrated as a sort of 'historic' thing - spinning without a wheel. If the 'rock' is a kind of stick - no idea what a 'distaff' looks like despite having a spinning wheel sitting in the house - then it might make a better weapon than a 'rock' in a misconstrued sense which I have picked up. It would also make sense of 'I'll sell my rock, I'll sell my reel, I'll even sell my spinning wheel' since it would be a made object of value (but wouldn't all these three be part of one thing?). It's fair to say that in the Baron o'Brackley the line which goes 'fetch yer rocks, lassies' is often replaced with 'fetch yer guns, ladies' for the same reason that the preceding 'she's called to her maries' is replaced with 'she's called to her servants' or 'lasses' - the original is not understood by modern audiences, and there's no point in telling a story if people don't understand the words. David Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] The Unfortunate Rake
| ... But, I've got the same problem with "The Bard" as I do | with "The Rake": finding a copy of it with a pre-1927 date! I have a book | here that claims the Bard was written in 1801 by Thomas Campbell, but I need | some kind of "proof" of that. Even if it's a facsimile re-print of an old | book containing that title, melody, and I'll take whatever lyrics I can find | at this point! It's in O'Neill's "Music of Ireland", published in 1903. It's tune 363. The tune is slightly different from Streets of Laredo, but it's obviously the same tune. Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] The Unfortunate Rake
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In a message dated 2/23/01 1:21:03 PM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Indeed. Maybe the best idea is to call it "The Bard of Omagh", and note in the text that it's a variant of the earlier tune "The Unfortunate Rake" and the later American ballad "The Streets of Laredo". I certainly could do this, and that's my line of reasoning for using the "Unfortunate Rake". But, I've got the same problem with "The Bard" as I do with "The Rake": finding a copy of it with a pre-1927 date! I have a book here that claims the Bard was written in 1801 by Thomas Campbell, but I need some kind of "proof" of that. Even if it's a facsimile re-print of an old book containing that title, melody, and I'll take whatever lyrics I can find at this point! I had great success at the Library of Congress with some of the tunes I chose to use. I actually held in my hands broadsides from circa 1800 for some of them. For those, no one had better dare to claim I violated copyright! It was interesting to see how the words for some of these tunes have changed over the last two centuries. I used the older lyrics, for very obvious reasons! So, anyway: if I get stuck for the Rake, does anyone know where I can find an old copy of "The Bard of Armagh"? --Cynthia Cathcart Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html The Library of Congress has 'Crosby's Irish Musical Repository', 1808, which contain the tune "The Unfortunate Rake", and is tha source of the ABC of the tune as T060 in file T1.HTM on my website. Smollet Holden gave a version with slightly different timing about 2 years earlier. Both can be found in 'Sources of Irish Music', 1998. No early 19th century copy of the ballad is known, and the earliest extant version seems to be "The Buck's Elegy" reprinted from the Madden collection in Holloway and Black's 'Later English Broadside Ballads.' Bruce Olson -- Old English, Irish and, Scots: popular songs, tunes, broadside ballads at my website (no advs-spam, etc)- www.erols.com/olsonw or click below A href="http://www.erols.com/olsonw" Click /a Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] pesticide poisoning
Jack Campin wrote: snip The next phase is probably where Erica is. If pralidoxime is not given soon enough, binding of the poison to the enzyme becomes *irreversible*. And for reasons I don't understand, the enzyme is not replaced, ever. There's no consensus on how long you've got before this phase is reached: I've seen 24 hours, 2 weeks and a month all quoted in different books. Once this has happened, nerve damage is permanent and the symptoms are chronically disabling: weakness, fatigue, mental disturbance, spasms, pain, partial blindness. This is what happened to Marion's patients: she could only palliate their symptoms and help them fight a compensation case in court (they won). Big doses of nutritional supplements (e.g. intravenous magnesium) may help to some extent. Hello Jack, Thanks for posting all this. I have many of these symptoms, though thankfully not the partial blindness. As far as I've been able to discover, I was poisoned with 2-4-5-T (a herbicide, not an OP), although my doctor (who is very experienced in the chemical injury field) finds this baffling; he says I have the symptoms of OP poisoning. Either way, I certainly didn't receive any treatment. The poisoning happened in the evening. My then husband and I were living 25 miles out in the bush with no phone, and as we were both too ill to drive or walk (we were both poisoned), we just had to weather the acute phase of it, which was very frightening, although not as severe as what you have described. I don't remember much about it, but I have an image of us clinging to each other, terrified, wondering if we were going to die. We didn't, of course, and he recovered completely (apparently). I didn't. I contracted viral encephalitis soon afterwards, which aggravated matters dramatically, and I've never been well since. These days, though, I'm a lot better than I have been, and I continue to improve (though infuriatingly slowly). Even if it never really goes away, I'd be satisfied with just not being bedridden. I'm sick of not having a life! best, Erica Mackenzie Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
